Douglass Gordon is a Scottish artist whose work has been very integral in the medium of video art. His work is very relevant to the ideas and concepts of this class in the ways he approaches his art, using highly conceptual ideas to create intriguing and challenging artwork. Although not video art, his text based pieces Meaning and Location and List of Names demonstrate the high level of conceptual thought that we aim for in these projects. Meaning and Location plays with language by changing the placement of one comma in the Gospel of Luke to change the meaning of the sentence entirely. Additionally, his ongoing project since 1991, List of Names, is very similar to On Kawara’s ongoing date paintings. List of Names is a piece in which Gordon tries to write down all the names of all the people he’s ever met. Instead of adding to a list, however, he restarts every time, listing names from memory. Using this conceptual approach, each piece of List of Names is different, bringing up issues of memory, time, and importance of human interaction. Interestingly, each piece is inherently incomplete. The piece looks very similar to a war memorial, a long list of names. However, though some people may have died, the piece doesn't memorialize their death, but their life and their human interaction with the artist. One of his most popular works, the video installation 24 HourPsycho, takes the Alfred Hitchcock film Psycho and slows its play rate down to two frames per second, a twelfth of the normal 24 fps play rate, stretching the film from a running time of 120 minutes to 1440. This exemplifies the artist translating many of the concepts he has used in other works to video art. Time and memory, for example, are major themes of List of Names. In 24 Hour Psycho, Gordon explores this in the sense of video. What happens to plot when the actions occur hours apart? List of Names highlights the theme of repetition with the long columns of text. By slowing down the frame rate of Psycho, he creates a similar sense of repetition. Many of the single frames are very similar to each other, so while watching it there is a similar sense of overwhelming repetition of a very small aspect of something. Gordon’s work is very representative of the ways in which artists can approach video installation art. The technology of video provides artists with a medium very much unlike other in history. In creating our visual art one of the challenges is figuring out new ways to communicate concepts. Where painting, drawing, and similar mediums have conventional and somewhat limited ways of approaching concepts, video art is somewhat of a new frontier with new potential for capturing, borrowing from, and altering reality. Alfred Hitchcock made the film Psycho in 1960. Gordon’s art challenges the conventions of art by taking this pre-made piece and applying it to his video art. Video technology enabled him to make one very basic change that gives the exact same series of frames a completely different set of concepts, ideas, and questions that apply to it. Video art provides artists with a very different set of media and tools with which to create art, and by approaching it from a highly conceptualized sense, artists like Gordon can create stimulating, challenging, and relevant video installation pieces.
Although not video art, his text based pieces Meaning and Location and List of Names demonstrate the high level of conceptual thought that we aim for in these projects. Meaning and Location plays with language by changing the placement of one comma in the Gospel of Luke to change the meaning of the sentence entirely. Additionally, his ongoing project since 1991, List of Names, is very similar to On Kawara’s ongoing date paintings. List of Names is a piece in which Gordon tries to write down all the names of all the people he’s ever met. Instead of adding to a list, however, he restarts every time, listing names from memory. Using this conceptual approach, each piece of List of Names is different, bringing up issues of memory, time, and importance of human interaction. Interestingly, each piece is inherently incomplete. The piece looks very similar to a war memorial, a long list of names. However, though some people may have died, the piece doesn't memorialize their death, but their life and their human interaction with the artist.
One of his most popular works, the video installation 24 Hour Psycho, takes the Alfred Hitchcock film Psycho and slows its play rate down to two frames per second, a twelfth of the normal 24 fps play rate, stretching the film from a running time of 120 minutes to 1440. This exemplifies the artist translating many of the concepts he has used in other works to video art. Time and memory, for example, are major themes of List of Names. In 24 Hour Psycho, Gordon explores this in the sense of video. What happens to plot when the actions occur hours apart? List of Names highlights the theme of repetition with the long columns of text. By slowing down the frame rate of Psycho, he creates a similar sense of repetition. Many of the single frames are very similar to each other, so while watching it there is a similar sense of overwhelming repetition of a very small aspect of something.
Gordon’s work is very representative of the ways in which artists can approach video installation art. The technology of video provides artists with a medium very much unlike other in history. In creating our visual art one of the challenges is figuring out new ways to communicate concepts. Where painting, drawing, and similar mediums have conventional and somewhat limited ways of approaching concepts, video art is somewhat of a new frontier with new potential for capturing, borrowing from, and altering reality. Alfred Hitchcock made the film Psycho in 1960. Gordon’s art challenges the conventions of art by taking this pre-made piece and applying it to his video art. Video technology enabled him to make one very basic change that gives the exact same series of frames a completely different set of concepts, ideas, and questions that apply to it. Video art provides artists with a very different set of media and tools with which to create art, and by approaching it from a highly conceptualized sense, artists like Gordon can create stimulating, challenging, and relevant video installation pieces.